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Taryn
I WAIT BY THE CURTAIN for my signal and try not to faint or be sick or wet myself. I mean, I should be used to this. I’ve been a ballet dancer since I was six, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve waited backstage, just as I am now. But this is it. This is the most important pas de deux of my life, the dance that will decide everything.
Across the other side of backstage, by the opposite curtain, I see Teddy, my partner. He’s dressed in white tights and a dressy shirt—also white—which make him look like Mr. Darcy, even if he’s playing Romeo. My Juliet outfit—a simple, cream leotard with a white chiffon skirt and glossy, white tights—matches his in that I don’t think it’s quite right for Romeo and Juliet. Madame Cachelle wanted to try something different.
Teddy makes eye contact, nods at me. I nod back and pray that the butterflies in my stomach will go away, even though Madame says butterflies are good. They’re a sign you care, my little gems, a sign you’re not over-confident.
I breathe deeply. I can do this. We can do this. Me and Teddy, because I know him like I know myself. We’re in tune, and when we dance, we’re one being. Three years ago, when the diploma program paired us together in our main pairs—the pairs we’d be dancing in for at least half of the training program, matching us on height, weight, and ability, to make lifts easier—I never expected how close we’d get. How in tune we’d become. There’s an old saying that Madame doesn’t like—that each dancer has their dance soulmate. Madame says it’s a load of tosh, because a good dancer needs to be able to dance with many others. Schedules may change at the last minute, or an injury may mean the prima ballerina ends up dancing a pas de deux with someone other than the male principal. We have to be flexible, and Roseheart specializes in pas de deux. While Teddy is the dancer I’m most familiar dancing with, I’ve also danced with every other male undergrad at some point—and that’s how I know that Teddy and I are matched in a way that doesn’t compare when I dance with others. I want to keep dancing with Teddy. So long as this goes well, I will. If we get into the company, Teddy and I will be performing together for the duration of the three-year contract with Roseheart Romantic Dance Company—and possibly longer after that, depending on renewals. Sure, we’d each dance with others too, but Roseheart is unusual in that it favors dancers dancing with their primary partners.
Behind me, I hear Madame fussing around. Normally she’s in the front row of seats, but given the importance of this performance, she’s back here, keeping time, giving last-minute encouragements, and reminding us that we’re all amazing little gems.
She taps me on the shoulder, twice, and I breathe in her spicy perfume.
Get ready.
As if I need to be told.
I turn and nod at Madame. She’s nearly fifty, but you wouldn’t know it looking at her. She’s in shape and still performs one of the best arabesques I’ve ever seen. Now, backstage under the edgy lighting, she’s all dark eyes and glossy, dark skin. Her heart-shaped face is smiling as she gives me an encouraging nod.
On stage, the music changes, gets softer and softer. I turn back and lift each foot up in turn, tapping the ribbons on my Repetto Alicia pointe shoes. Three taps for good luck. So far, it’s always worked.
The petit rats—the younger dancers of the academy—are leaving the stage, exiting via the other side door. They traipse past Teddy, and I see how he’s now completely focused on the music. He’ll be counting down the seconds it takes the stagehands to wheel the gargoyles on in the near darkness.
Because this is it now. It’s time for the balcony pas de deux—the performance that will get Teddy and I the places with the Roseheart Romantic Dance Company, allowing us to dance alongside the professionals in their fall tour in nine weeks’ time—and in the many performances after. It’s what every dancer at this academy wants: twelve dancers will graduate each year, but only two are accepted into the academy’s company. The rest will audition for other companies or be selected straight away by scouts based on this performance—but the roles outside of Roseheart will nearly always be solo roles. Roseheart is the only company in Europe that focuses exclusively on duos and pas de deux; it’s unusual in that its board only accepts a new duo at a time, never singles. And being a professional dancer—and proving to Mum that it’s not all a waste of time and that yes, I had to go to this school in particular—is everything I’ve ever wanted.
As the pianist drops an octave, I make my entrance. My Alicia shoes give me confidence. Repetto is one of my favorite pointe shoe brands, and these ones have a three-quarter shank that gives extra flexibility, molds well to the arches of my feet, ensuring better weight distribution than some of my other shoes. I always dance well in my Repettos.
The lights on the stage are bright while those over the audience are so dim that I can’t see who’s in the front row, but I know: Roseheart’s company director, the board members and directors and managers from other companies always want the best seats. Behind, there’ll be various members of the academy’s staff and groundkeepers, along with our sponsors and the families of dancers. And, of course, there are the journalists. I try not to think about them. Just as I try not to think about how my mum isn’t here. But that’s okay. I’d be more unnerved if she was.
This year, Romeo and Juliet is the academy’s end of year production. All the students are involved, from the youngest petit rats to the seniors and the diploma undergraduates. Across the three years of the diploma course, there are thirty-six undergrads. Six girls, six boys per year. As Romeo and Juliet, Teddy and I are the favorites to be accepted into Roseheart’s company. I let that knowledge fill me, use it to boost my confidence because when I’m confident—not over-confident, mind—I always perform better.
I dance onto the stage, trying not to look into the audience in case I see the journalist who made my life hell, and meet Teddy halfway. This pas de deux is one of my favorites. I know the Royal Ballet’s performance of it by their principal dancers, Yasmine Naghdi and Matthew Bell, off by heart, but our routine is different, darker. Our choreographer, Rai-Ann Lockhart, wanted this performance to have a touch of danger, and Madame thought it would be excellent to dress Teddy and I in white and project cobwebs across the stage and us. Since we got an upgrade backstage on lighting and special effects, Madame’s been all about including it in sophisticated and appropriate ways. Sam, the tech guy, has been run ragged the last few weeks. But the modern technology does add to our performance.
The pianist strikes darker notes to match the flickering spiders dancing across my skin, and there’s a sense of fire between Teddy and I as we move and wrap each other in emotions. There’s rawness and desperation, a fear of our characters forever being kept apart and doomed to loneliness and insanity where our minds will be eaten, as we capture the frustration of being star-crossed lovers.
Or, at least, what we think it would feel like.
Dancing with Teddy is seamless—it always has been. We just fit together. There’s no gap between where he begins and where I end as we perform. We’re one being as we command the stage, capturing more and more passion. The tempo rises as I spin away from Teddy, pirouetting. Five seconds to go until we fly back together and finish the pas de deux with the kiss.
The kiss I’m trying not to think about.
There are two statues on the stage, actual statues made of stone. Both are carved into gargoyles, chosen because the academy’s artistic director said it would enhance the gothic undertones of Rai-Ann’s choreography and Madame’s vision, and in the first three seconds of the five, I dance around the statue on the left, knowing Teddy is doing the same on the right.
You are corresponding with these creatures, asking them for their advice on whether you should embrace this romance, knowing the dangerous consequences such an act could have.
Two seconds to go.
And this is it.
I look up and lock eyes with Teddy, ready to run to him and embrace my Romeo, where we will transition into the most spectacular of lifts. But then Teddy trips, surges forward, and—
I see it happen in slow motion. See how he soars forward, see how shiny his forehead is as he slams headfirst into his gargoyle. I’ve already started my run toward him, because my body is almost on autopilot because I know this routine off by heart. And maybe part of me thinks Teddy will right himself in time, will get up and carry on and meet me for the lift so we can end with the kiss—but he doesn’t.
He slumps down the gargoyle.
The audience gasps.
The pianist stops, a heaviness holding the air. There’s just my pounding heart, my feet now slapping on the stage, my ragged breaths.
I reach him and drop to his side. “Teddy?” My voice shakes, and he’s not moving. I touch his shoulder, but my hand looks strange with the spiders still projected across the whole of the stage, and it unnerves me, makes me freeze as I just stare at him.
Others run onto the stage. Madame and Rai-Ann and Ross, the physio. I hear other voices, so many I don’t know or can’t recognize, as hands shove me back. The lights over the audience go on. The company directors’ faces suddenly look like caricatures, grotesque and growing, stretching.
Words fly around, and I’m trying to get back to Teddy, to see if he’s okay, because it still doesn’t look like he’s moving. Unconscious?
Ross barks directions at someone, and then I hear Alma, one of the other soon-to-be graduates, calling for an ambulance. Ballerinas and danseurs race around, some looking scared, others excited.
Excited?
“Teddy? It’s okay.” Somehow, I get to him, and I’m holding onto his arm, and he’s still not moving. He’s so...still.
“Back now, Miss Foster. Give us space.”
“Here, come on.” Sibylle, my understudy, touches my shoulder then leads me away. I must be numb because I let her, even though we’re not friends and I don’t like people touching me. Not unless it’s during a performance, because then it’s art. This is just...unnecessary. But I don’t say anything.
We walk past the front row of the audience, where everyone is standing. Somber faces and hushed voices, stretching back, row after row. I scan all the faces, searching for the journalists, but I can’t see her—Adelaide James, the reporter who tried to turn the world against me, but I’m still nervous. The academy’s security should keep her out, but she got in before.
“Such a shame,” the Roseheart Company Artistic Director says. A tall man with a twisty moustache. Mr. Aleks. I recognize him from the staff photo board at the entrance of the company’s main building. He never bothers himself with the academy, only attending the end-of-year production each year to see which two dancers Miss Tavi will choose to join the Company. I’ve heard Mr. Aleks sits in on many of the company’s first-division’s training sessions and rehearsals, only occasionally bothering with the second and third divisions, but Netty Florence Stone—the company’s female principal who dances in the first division—told Teddy once that you only really hear from Mr. Aleks if he’s not happy.
Next to Mr. Aleks, Mr. Vikas nods. Madame already introduced us to him earlier this year. He’s the company’s third-division ballet master and he’s been at Roseheart for twenty years. He works with a choreographer, and together they have the most contact with their dancers. He’s the one who trains the third-division ballerinas and danseurs, the division that all the new recruits automatically go into. Suddenly, it feels important to me that I know all of this, exactly how the company works.
Miss Tavi, the woman in charge of selecting the new recruits and who corresponds closely with Madame Cachelle regarding the third-year undergraduates’ progress across the final year of the program, nods to Mr. Aleks and Mr. Vikas. “Definitely a shame,” she says. “We’d have taken the two leads for sure, otherwise.”
We’d have taken the two leads for sure, otherwise.
Otherwise.
“So, who do we replace the boy with?” Mr. Vikas says, looking at Miss Tavi, and I can’t believe they’re still thinking about this. “We need Miss Foster.”
I jolt. Replace the boy? So, I won’t be dancing with Teddy in the company? My throat feels like it’s closing up, like there’s not enough room in it to be able to breathe.
“We should wait to see if Mr. Walker is seriously injured,” Miss Tavi says. “He may be able to dance with us after all.”
Mr. Aleks shakes his head. “We have to decide tonight. It’s the way it’s always been done. Mr. Walker can always audition for a space next year with a new partner if he's not seriously injured. But we need to focus on this year and who we are admitting. Miss Tavi, who’s the male second choice?”
Mr. Vikas and Miss Tavi both peer at her clipboard. She’s been making notes on us.
“Mr. MacQuoid is the understudy for the male lead role,” Miss Tavi says. “Madame Cachelle and the other ballet teachers say he is above average. And he did perform well in his role as Benvolio tonight, from what we saw.”
Xavier MacQuoid. I inhale sharply. Dancing with Xavier is okay. He’s strong. Really strong, and he’s got good technique. But he’s not Teddy. But if dancing with him as my primary partner is now the only way I can get into the company, I’ll do it.
I turn and see Xavier behind me, listening intently. His eyes shine. When Teddy was in the picture, I know none of the other guys expected to have a shot.
“But Miss Foster is not above average,” Mr. Vikas says. “She’s exceptional. As is Mr. Walker. We need the accepted duo to be well-matched.” He clears his throat. “Asking Miss Foster to dance with Mr. MacQuoid would limit her potential and create an unbalanced pairing.”
I hear Xavier’s breathing quicken, but I try to ignore him, try to forget he’s here.
“Yes, we had that problem a few years ago with Miss Radnor and Mr. Barnes,” Mr. Aleks says. “It made their performance too clunky. We then couldn’t give Mr. Barnes the roles he deserved, and she held him back.”
I hold my breath. Mr. Barnes and Miss Radnor—Tom and Clara—were both let go of after a year, their contract being dissolved. There’d been uproar at the time, especially as Tom was very talented, but the board insisted both had to be let go. Roseheart follows strict rules, left by our founder, and it is cutthroat here. Nonetheless, Tom went on to have a successful career with a Russian company. I never heard of Clara again—her name was tainted by this. She’d have secured solo roles for sure with other companies had she never been accepted by Roseheart and then let go, her reputation tarred. Because after Roseheart, Clara couldn’t get any auditions at all.
“Can we bypass the duo admission rule?” Mr. Vikas asks. “Because I want Miss Foster in our company.”
Sibylle edges forward, standing next to Xavier. She’s the other understudy for a main role. My understudy.
“I want Miss Foster, too,” Miss Tavi says, and she looks to Mr. Alek. “I’m happy to bypass the duo requirement if you think it’ll work?”
He shakes his head, then twists the ends of his moustache. “We do that, and we’ll lose funding from our main sponsors if we don’t follow the wishes of the late Mrs. Roseheart.”
“So, what do we do?” Mr. Vikas throws his hands up in the air. “I don’t want to miss out on Miss Foster, but I strongly advise she’s not paired with a lesser dancer.”
“Well, if that’s not a choice, we admit the two understudies as a duo,” Miss Tavi says. “Or we admit no one.”
“We admit no one,” a new voice says. A man I don’t know—someone with a lot of weighting? “This is a moot point you’re all discussing. We can only admit graduates—and as this ballet did not conclude, we have no graduates.”
My stomach sinks. No graduates.
It’s all...over.